Square seems to be missing more than its hitting on the App Store, but the Chaos Rings series falls into the latter pretty safely. Both are fun, iOS-native RPGs with tons of unique content from the get-go. These updates to Omega are icing on an already delicious, and fairly well-rounded cake. Here's hoping more are to come, though. We like free content.
...And hard. In spite of the fleecy clouds and the pink dolphins, SuperGlueStudio's physics puzzler isn't a game for the faint-hearted. One false step and you're dead or, well, whatever passes for dead with doughy-looking things like the protagonist. Here in Clay's Reverie, death is synonymous with touching anything asides from the conveyor belt. It's a tough life but those are the breaks when you're a little, googly-eyed ball of white clay.
Fortunately, the odds are somewhat in your favor. Clay's Reverie benefits from simple and supremely responsive controls. Holding down on the conveyer belt allows you to move it on a vertical axis. Clay, on the other hand, does not seem quite as appreciative of such a hands-on approach. In order to control the blob-by hero himself, you're going to have to make use of the iPhone's accelerometer to roll him around the screen.
As easy and insipidly sweet as all this might sound, Clay's Reverie demands a substantial amount of finesse as the worlds you find yourself visiting are ... floating death traps, if you want to put it mildly. Bristling with spikes and all manner of metallic menaces, these worlds are all but friendly. For reasons unknown, they're also filled with the stars that Clay seems to covet. What malleable white spheres with the ability to magically transform into random other shapes after the consumption of dodgy-looking seeds want with flaming heavenly bodies is beyond me but that's how things goes. Come heck or high water, you're going to have to acquire the maximum number of stars possible and reach the finishing line without expiring more than three times.
It's a surprisingly tall order. Those with shaky hands should probably find themselves another diversion because Clay's Reverie is rather shameless about punishing those with an unsteady grip. This, in turn, wouldn't be so bad were it not for the fact that the check points are far and few in between, an issue that many will become intimately aware of after the initial few playthroughs. Given that a certain number of stars are necessary to proceed to the next world, the whole thing can result in a fair amount of frustration.
If you're willing to overlook that little problem, Clay's Reverie is a mostly satisfying experience. It's challenging without being unreasonably so, complex but accessible. Your six-year old cousin, on the off chance they're the precocious sort, would probably enjoy themselves with this one too. Friendly, straightforward and furiously adorable, Clay's Reverie is a lot of fun.
TouchArcade Rating:
If you're a fan of Red Dead Redemption and similar western-themed horse riding games with lots (and lots) of fighting, Gameloft's upcoming Six-Guns might just be what you're looking for. The environments look pretty impressive, although I'm not entirely sure which games Gameloft will be borrowing the combat mechanic from just yet. Take a look:
One curious thing that sticks out in the trailer is the whole "play for free" thing. Gameloft has been predictably vague in just how players will actually pay for the game, but hopefully whatever free to play model they settle on won't be too offensive to gamers.
For example, Telltale Games has lowered its games' prices 55-80 percent from the usual. The savings began on November 23, but will continue until tomorrow, November 30. Arghata Studio also bashed the prices of its 1112 series in honor of our Turkey Day, and those sales are still continuing, too, well into this week.
Here's a short list of some notables:
Odds And Ends
Agharta Studios
Telltale Games
�
Cool deals, right? As a side-note, if you feel like you've been left out of the initial extravaganza, App Shopper [Free] remains an incredible tool to keep on the up and up. You can read more about it here.
There's hype building publicity stunts, then there's hype building publicity stunts. Pre-release excitement for Chair's upcoming Infinity Blade 2 is already at an all time high, which apparently has left Chair's PR department scratching their collective heads to come up with what else they could do to promote a game that's already on cruise control for greatness.
I'm guessing this eureka moment coincided with late night fitness-centric infomercials, resulting in a promotion that's so silly we couldn't help but post about it. Anyway, Chair has partnered up with musclebound bro Nate Green who is known for The Hero Handbook, a free fitness-oriented self-help eBook. Nate (who can be seen above working out at the local playground) put together a list of exercises which should help prepare even the weakest of hands for Infinity Blade 2.
So, without further ado, we present to you, the unedited Infinity Blade 2 workout in its entirety:
1. Rubberband Splay: This is the reverse movement of gripping something. Train the reverse muscles in your hands and wrist to strengthen them.
Take a rubber band and place it around your thumb and fingertips. Touch all of your fingers together. Splay your fingers as far as you can stretch them and fight the resistance of the rubberband. Touch all of your fingers together again. That's one rep. Do 20 on each hand.
2. Book Grip: Test your grip endurance. Can you hold for 20 seconds with just your index finger and thumb?
3. Quarter Toss: Improve your reflexes and hand-eye coordination.
Grab a quarter, lay your hand flat, and place it on your fingers. In one motion, flick your wrist, sending the quarter flying through the air. Grab the quarter mid-air quickly. That's one rep. Perform 10 reps on each hand.
4. Sandbag or Tennis Ball Dynamic Grip: Strengthen the muscles in your hands, fingers and wrists.
Hold a hot pad (shown) or a tennis ball in your hand with an underhand grip. Squeeze as hard as you can and hold for 2 seconds. Release your grip and repeat. Go for 30 reps on each hand.
5. Wrist and Forearm Stretch: After all that hardcore hero finger training, stretch your muscles in your wrist and forearms before you play Infinity Blade 2.
Put your hand flat in front of you. Grab the fingers of that hand with your other hand and gently pull your fingers toward your body, keeping your arm straight. You should feel a pull in your forearm and wrist. Hold for 30 seconds. Do 1 set for each hand.
Neat, right -- and all in the name of fun. Regardless if you're into pumping up your fingers and hands, Infinity Blade 2 hits in the next couple of days at $6.99. If you haven't yet, give our preview a look, and chat with fellow finger-working buddies in the Infinity Blade 2 forum thread.
Meanwhile, we're putting the finishing touches on our review which will go live with the launch of the game. Spoilers: It's awesome.
8:37 AM
Set in a post-apocalyptic world, Bullet Time follows John Irish, a man out to rescue his family from the mutated creatures inhabiting the land. You'll lead John through a variety of locales that look striking and definitely give off a Borderlands sort of vibe. The game looks great and runs amazingly well on an iPhone 4S, although there was some minor slowdown on a 4th generation iPod touch.
Control-wise, Bullet Time plays like your standard dual stick shooter, with no significant positives or negatives to the standard formula. In addition, from a gameplay perspective, you'll always have a primary mission to accomplish, but the game also throws a few side missions and secret locales at you if you're willing to look for them. Bullet Time also features a lot of excellent ambient sounds and hard rock music that do a great job setting the tone of the game. From a presentation standpoint, Bullet Time simply rocks.
One of Bullet Time's strengths is in the wide variety of weapons, armor, and upgrades available to help on your quest for mutant destruction. Mr. Irish can take two different weapons into battle at any one time, and each weapon can be outfitted with powers that range from increased damage and critical change to enemy slowdown.�Weapons also have various special abilities, such as rapid-fire or piercing, which add an additional strategic element. In addition, there are three pieces of armor you can upgrade, along with five different short-term boosts that you can use during play. Add all this together, and there is a ton of room for customization and replayability.
The freemium elements come into play with Bullet Time's currency system. As you journey through each mission, you'll primarily earn silver, which is the main currency in the game. In addition, you'll also occasionally find crystals, the 'premium' currency (you will earn crystals with each level up, too).�While a lot of the gear you can buy requires silver to purchase, the top gear for each level typically requires crystals, which can also be purchased via IAP. While you do earn a decent amount of crystals during normal play, there are items that are simply unobtainable unless you purchase extra crystals.
This will undoubtedly irk some folks, but I thought the developers did a great job optimizing the gameplay for equipment obtainable via silver. While some games implicitly require the freemium items for players to simply succeed, Bullet Time instead treats them as premium items that make the experience easier, and maybe a little more fun, which is my ideal view for these sorts of items.
In addition to the single player campaign, Bullet Time also has a survival-based multiplayer mode with up to three gamers playing simultaneously. Players can elect to be paired up randomly with other folks or they can start/join games with their Game Center friends.�Unfortunately, I had a lot of trouble trying to start a randomized game, but I was able to try a few Game Center ones. Once I was able to get a game going I found survival mode to be incredibly fun, particularly when I was able to play with folks in the same room as me. You also earn experience and silver while playing survival sessions, which makes multiplayer even more worth it if you're able to get a game going.
Simply put, Bullet Time gets a lot of things right when it comes to dual stick shooters. The controls, presentation, customization and replayability are all well done. Sure, it would be nice to be able to acquire all the items without IAP, and the multiplayer lobby system had some issues, but those are not game breakers.�Add in the fact that the game is free and that the freemium elements are nonintrusive, and Bullet Time becomes a must-play for any fans of the genre. I only hope other developers take note, because this is how freemium should be done.
TouchArcade Rating:
From moment to moment you're tasked with the categorization of brand new animal hybrids. While you might be familiar with the dreaded CA-MEL or TI-GER, would you recognize a RAB-HOG on sight? How about a WART-DOR-PUS-STER? Anything goes in Gua-Le-Ni, and you'll need to be quick enough to go along with it.
You do this with a collection of blocks, like children's alphabet blocks. Each face of each block possesses one syllable of an animal's name, and a section of that animal to go with it. So a "Ti" block face would have a tiger's head, and the "Ger" would have its rear.
The blocks can be turned, spun and moved around to form whatever fantastic beast steps across your screen. You're given two to start, a reasonable number for learning, but when you're tired of the fifteenth variation of "Lob-mon" or "Rhi-ster" it will be time to move on.
You can do so at your own pace, more or less. In Fiction mode, you can add or remove blocks at will. Four-sectioned creatures may strain your taxonomic talents (and your speedy fingers), but they're a worthy challenge after some practice. Once you've practiced to your heart's content, you can move on to Non-Fiction mode.
Non-Fiction is no less imaginative than Fiction mode, but the beasts are more beastly and hungry. Some are herbivores, some carnivores, so you'll need to be on your toes to feed them correctly. There are meals to be made with each combo of three feedings, and bonus points to be earned for them. Feed the animals the wrong foods, however, and it will ruin your combinations.
An odd bit of extra-terrestrial muck can be fed to the animals as well, mutating them into bigger and odder forms. But you must choose to do this -- difficulty is not generally forced upon you. The developers at Double Jungle apparently tested the game for biometric reactions in order to ensure that the difficulty curve was appropriate and the cognitive challenge was always sufficient, and this attention to detail shows. Gua-Le-Ni is difficult enough to keep players strung along without indulging in pointless frustration.
Despite that bit of friction, though, I find myself continually drawn back into Gua-Le-Ni. Much of its appeal is aesthetic. The scrap paper creatures are partly horrid in their combinations, but partly gorgeous too. The sound is catchy, and the tome-like interface is elegant and entirely usable. The narration particularly stands out, delightfully dotty as it is.
But the gameplay is no slouch, either. Part of the challenge lies in memorization -- the blocks you use are always the same, so once you know where to find the "Ti," you'll likely never lose it. But managing meals complicates matters, as does the growing speed of the beasts that pass by. Your speed matters too -- you earn more points for an animal classified quickly than one that takes time.
Your successes add up into high scores, ranked on two Game Center leaderboards. One is for total score, as could well be expected. But one is cleverer: the time it takes you to earn a Two of Four. That's two full animals classified with four blocks each in Non-Fiction mode. It's good inspiration to move up to four blocks as quickly as you can -- lingering at fewer blocks slows down your scoring, and knocks off any chance you have of ranking on that leaderboard. There are also a selection of achievements to earn, some clever, but a few too many focused on sharing or rating the game.
Many players will find Gua-Le-Ni a bit steep for what it offers, the rather simple puzzle game at its heart. But for those of you who, like me, are drawn in by its gallimaufry of nonsense creatures, the game will be nearly impossible to resist. Give in -- Gua-Le-Ni follows through with charm and plenty of fun. The joy of taxonomy may fade in time, but you'll always have the knowledge that you were the one to identify the humble Lob-hog-bit, and that's a memory that will last. Share it in our discussion thread.
TouchArcade Rating:
The world has grown bleak in Extraction. Experiments on prisoners of war and military personnel have created a viral outbreak turning everyone into a zombie-like state. As a member of a private military contractor, you're brought in to run a variety of missions that include rescuing scientists, escorting soldiers, defending sentry technicians and simply killing zombies (don't worry, you get to kill zombies in all the other missions as well). Also, like any good government contractor, you're rewarded handsomely with tons of cash at the end of each successful mission, which can be used to unlock and upgrade weapons.
The weapon upgrades system is one of the best and most robust features of Extraction. Players can choose to upgrade their primary (typically assault rifles) or secondary (pistols) weapon trees, with upgrades ranging from increased damage and ammunition to better accuracy and range. Each tree also includes the ability to unlock attack drones and sentry turrets, which add an additional level of strategy to playing out each mission. There is a large amount of upgrades available and each gun actually has a different feel when using it, making you more likely to keep playing simply to unlock everything.
Extraction also has a separate experience/leveling system which allows you to increase your player's armor, gun skill, and more. One strange choice is the artificial limitation on upgrading certain skills. For example, I never melee, but once I hit a certain level the game won't let me upgrade other skills until I put some points into melee. However, it's still a decent system and does its job expanding replayability.
In addition, different weapons also have different skill shot meters, meaning that some guns are easier to land a skill shot with than others. The closest analogy to this system is the active reloading mechanism made popular in the Gears of War series. In any case, I loved the control system, as its one of those rare implementations that manages to make the basics approachable while still reserving some challenge for folks that want to master the skill shot.
One area that Extraction somewhat falters is in its overall mission variety. As mentioned earlier, there are only four main mission types. In addition, there are also a limited amount of environment tile sets. While the difficulty obviously increases in the latter parts of the campaign, each mission starts to feel like you've played it before, leading to a lot of unfortunately monotony. While I understand that these sorts of mission-based games are bound to have some repetition, I think another tile set or two would have gone a long way towards alleviating the tedium. As it is, the upgrade system is probably the only thing keeping you trudging through the later missions (although there's plenty of IAP available to unlock your upgrades faster).
Thankfully, the developer has been pretty active in our forum and has stated that future updates will include a few extra modes to increase the variety�(the updates should also address a few crashes related to early iOS hardware). Regardless, Extraction as it stands is still a great game worthy of a play through. If you have any interest in top down shooters, and you're a fan of extensive unlockables, check it out.
TouchArcade Rating:
